Throughout the weekend, people around the world have been gathering in cities lighting candles and leaving messages. The sign reads: “Cariocas, for peace in France”.
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People leave floral tributes at the main entrance of Le Carillon restaurant.
Determined to root out jihadists within French communities, Hollande said he would present a bill Wednesday seeking to extend a state of emergency – granting the police and military greater powers of search and arrest, and local governments the right to ban demonstrations and impose curfews – for another three months. We don’t know how many people were arrested as a result of these raids.
In neighbouring Belgium, the base for many of Friday’s attackers, police surrounded the suspected hideout of a man identified as a driver for the attackers, but came up empty after charging into the property.
Police have named Belgium-born French national Salah Abdeslam, 26, as a key suspect.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said police arrested 23 people and recovered a Kalashnikov and other weapons during the overnight raids.
White House officials said Obama agreed with Hollande that the killings in Paris were an “act of war”, and they promised that the United States would deepen cooperation with French officials.
A French defense official has said the country had launched a “massive” series of airstrikes on Raqqa, ISIS’ self-declared capital, involving 12 planes, including 10 fighter jets, with 20 bombs dropped.
The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian Gulf, in co-ordination with USA forces.
However, Iraqi intelligence officials told the AP they provided other details to France, including that attackers had been trained specifically for Friday’s attack and were deployed from Raqqa. But one U.S. official said yesterday that the evident weaponry skill displayed by the attackers suggests that they might have received training somewhere.
In Brussels, a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor said an worldwide arrest warrant has been issued for one of the brothers.
Yet police already had him in their grasp early Saturday, when they stopped a auto carrying three men near the Belgian border. Police then checked Abdeslam’s ID and subsequently let him go.
France has been bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria for months as part of a US-led operation.
All these French and Iraqi security and intelligence officials spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation.
It has also emerged that Iraq intelligence agencies had warned France on Thursday of an imminent attack.
Julien Pearce, a journalist at Europe 1 radio who escaped by crawling onto the stage, said he got a good look at one attacker who appeared “very young”.
Investigators identified two more extremists involved in the assault, including a Frenchman previously charged with planning a terror attack and a suicide bomber found with a Syrian passport, which has yet to be authenticated.
A woman wipes tears during a memorial tribute to the victims of Friday’s attacks in Paris, at the French Embassy in Beijing, China, November 16, 2015.
It is now known that three of the suicide bombers were French nationals, two of whom lived in the Belgian capital Brussels. Those attacks briefly united France in defence of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people.
Abdeslam rented the black Volkswagen Polo used by the hostage-takers.
Mostefai had a record of petty crime and had been flagged in 2010 for ties to Islamic radicalism, the Paris prosecutor said.
Police detained Mostefai’s father, a brother and other relatives Saturday night, and they were still being questioned Sunday, the judicial official said.
But the city’s museums will reopen today, including the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay.
The whole of Europe is expected to fall silent for one minute at 11am, this morning, as a show of support to the people of Paris, France.
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British police and spies are working closely with counterparts in France and Belgium to identify and pursue those behind the Paris massacre. He was identified by the print from one of his fingers that was severed when his suicide vest exploded.
